idn't I say I hate dancing?"

Just then a bell sounded; people began hurrying away. The girl came up
to Rosek.

"Miss Daphne Wing--Mrs. Fiorsen."

Gyp put out her hand with a smile--this girl was certainly a picture.
Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those who
have been carefully corrected of an accent:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays--doesn't he?"

It was not merely the careful speech but something lacking when the
perfect mouth moved--spirit, sensibility, who could say? And Gyp felt
sorry, as at blight on a perfect flower. With a friendly nod, she turned
away to Fiorsen, who was waiting to go up on to the platform. Was it at
her or at the girl he had been looking? She smiled at him and slid away.
In the corridor, Rosek, in attendance, said:

"Why not this evening? Come with Gustav to my rooms. She shall dance to
us, and we will all have supper. She admires you, Madame Gyp. She will
love to dance for you."

Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: "I don't want to come. I
don't like you!" But all she could manage was:

"Thank you. I--I will ask Gustav."

Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had touched.
A girl was singing now--one of those faces that Gyp always admired,
reddish-gold hair, blue eyes--the very antithesis of herself--and the
song was "The Bens of Jura," that strange outpouring from a heart broken
by love:

"And my heart reft of its own sun--"

Tears rose in her eyes, and the shiver of some very deep response passed
through her. What was it Dad had said: "Love catches you, and you're
gone!"

She, who was the result of love like that, did not want to love!

The girl finished singing. There was little applause. Yet she had sung
beautifully; and what more wonderful song in the world? Was it too
tragic, too painful, too strange--not "pretty" enough? Gyp felt sorry
for her. Her head ached now. She would so have liked to slip away when
it was all over. But she had not the needful rudeness. She would have
to go through with this evening at Rosek's and be gay. And why not? Why
this shadow over everything? But it was no new sensation, that of having
entered by her own free will on a life which, for all effort, would not
give her a feeling of anchorage or home. Of her own accord she had
stepped into the cage!

On the way to Rosek's rooms, she disguised from Fiorsen her headache and
depression.